Lyricana

Not a bad list overall, but if slide Mario Kart Wii back to 8th, 64 to 7th and swap Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit. Super Circuit is just better. Better controls, better visuals in some ways, all the original courses and twenty new ones.

@DjinnFighter Yep. Came here to say this. /laɪv ə laɪv/ is the only answer.

@Fizza I mostly agree with everything you said, but I'd give Super a lot more props. It was the most amazing thing ever when it was new, like a lot of entries in a new franchise and an underrepresented genre. The same cannot be said for some of the other entries in the series, like 64 and Wii. Not bad games, but they weren't that revolutionary game changer situation that Super Mario Kart was.

@AtlanteanMan When you have such long and plentiful parentheses segments, you should just consider rewriting your post and incorporating them in. It will make reading what you write less of a chore.

It's not bad looking or anything, but I don't feel like if pushes enough to be new/different. I think the original looks better.

I was interested at first, but that "battle system" looks not fun.

@Andy77mk In all fairness? I don't know about ALL fairness...

I was 100% about to buy these. I'm disappointed to hear about the performance. I guess I'll keep my eyes peeled for patch info.

@somebread Ah, in that case.. I definitely think this is better. With the exception of something like Super Smash Bros. where it's a story-lite it story-free experience and the big crossovers are kind of fun, I think the massive "everyone from every game possible" is less appealing. But I'm also not a big Musou fan. I didn't really like the original Hyrule Warriors or Fire Emblem Warriors. The story focused single game idea is what sells me on this. Well, what WILL sell me on it. I probably won't buy it until the first time it goes on sale for at least some discounted amount. Just got too much to do and too much to play right now.

@somebread What is a "series focused smash cast"?

To be honest, I'd be okay if they didn't have a standard Nintendo Direct and just pushed out some update trailers for the rest of the games coming this year. There has already been a good amount to play from Nintendo and quite a bit more on the way. Pokemon stuff will do their own presentations, Xenoblade has a Direct, Strikers just came out, Three Hopes doesn't need anything else, Splatoon 3 will surely get a ton of coverage in the near future and the rest of the fall stuff can get updated in September/October with a Direct then.

Still, they'll probably do one soonish anyway.

@Screen Being completely unfounded isn't mutually exclusive from also being a strong implication. Having a basis in fact isn't required for something to be implied. If anything, I'd argue that NOT having a basis in fact IS required to be an implication. If it were a known, irrefutable fact, it wouldn't be just an implication, strong or otherwise.

That said, I still agree with the underlying concept and think that even if there is a Nintendo Direct on the 29th that supposed leaks like this are still nonsense and not to be trusted. They're obvious fabrications 950 times out of 1000 and miscommunications or misinterpretations or old/meaningless information most of the rest of the time. Probably not even 1/1000 of these leaks that gets news coverage actually ends up having any validity.

@Chlocean Those are my favorite kind of Easter Eggs.
It's just like that one in Mega Man where Mega Man doesn't have any boss special powers before he beats the bosses because he hasn't beaten them yet!

I love the look of this, though I wish it had more in common with Chibi Robo than just the aesthetics. Definitely seems more Banjo Kazooie (which you did mention) gameplay wise. Which isn't bad. I love 3D platformers. It just makes me miss Chibi Robo more!

@tektite_captain The "no one asked for it" reason for games is always the worst possible reason and shouldn't even be in a conversation about anything entertainment related. Literally every new franchise ever created wasn't something any asked for and many of the best spin-offs of existing franchises are things no one asked for. I'm not saying Zip Lash was a good game and I agree with the rest of your statement, but it wasn't bad because no one asked for it. It was bad because it wasn't well made.

@Arawn93 How is the performance? I'm not able to check it out for a few days and kind of curious.

Also.. what do you mean, "golden route"?

I definitely misread the title at first as "better", not "belter" and I was like.. "a better what....?!?!".

@Tom-Massey Yeah, no problem. I like that the writers at Nintendo Life actually respond to comments and open up the the floor to questions and engagement, though obviously you sometimes get situations like this with @clockworktwink. Anyway, cheers. Thanks for the review.

@Tom-Massey I think that playing a few levels is fair for a review like this, anyway. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the vast majority of people purchasing the product are either already familiar with the games in it or in the event that they're not, they only need a little information to determine if they're adding to the worth of the package as a whole. Not to mention the fact that thousands of videos are available for these decades old games.

Frankly, it's rare to see reviews like this even give minor synopses of the individual titles at all and I can safely say I've never seen a package like this get full reviews per title. That's essentially unheard of. I'd goes as far as saying that many collections with far fewer games get less information on individual titles and sometimes when the packs get to 10+ games, reviews won't even list all the titles as they expect the reader to look that up if they're interested.

First and foremost, I want to know how the package comes together, if the games are ported successfully, if there's any upscaling or bugs and how the collection pulls them all together. You gave all that. And honestly, I was initially not going to pick up the package, but I'm giving it a second thought. I like the arcade aspect with the little extras. Ties the package together in a fun way.

@Tom-Massey For what it's worth, I read the linked review out of curiosity and the only real similarities between your comment (which, at least I don't think, isn't subject to the same literary criticism as an article anyway) and the review is that you both identified the same issues with a mediocre game. Saying that's plagiarism would be like claiming it's plagiarism to have two people think Red Dead Redemption 2 had nice graphics and slow travel.

As an aside, I'll admit I liked Pac-in-Time when I was younger and thought it was a fun rental, but I also haven't played it since the year it came out and I doubt I'd play it for more than a few minutes now. You weren't wrong about any of those points.

I like the idea of games like this. Reminds me of the fun castle battle mode in Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slims (Slime MoriMori Dragon Quest 2). Honestly, I'd love to see that series get some love. Also, more games like this but.. more fun looking? This is a little underwhelming. Still may check it out.

The Dread and Base Power Suit cosplays are really good.

@Tom-Massey I certainly wouldn't advocate for the price being different, but wasn't Strictly Limited selling this physical collection for $49.99? That's what their website says. Meanwhile, the eShop version is $29.99. I don't know what the exact price on the DLC will be and itcould even be free, though unlikely. Regardless, it likely wouldn't be more. Still true you don't get the other bonus stuff.

I'm not supporting the release or anything, just figured folks would want to know. I have no intention of ever buying anything from Strictly Limited and I'm not super excited for the digital collection considering I've played the games to death and already have most of them on Switch in some form anyway. It's not a great package.

@rushiosan They're releasing them as downloadable DLC. Not sure why the article didn't mention it.

@Pally356 If I tell you what?

@Anti-Matter It costs about 700 ZWD to buy a loaf of bread, which is roughly $2 USD. The average wage in Zimbabwe is 217,000 ZWD a month.

@YinYangYoshi There are a lot of beat 'em up fans who like Rival Turf and Congo's Caper also has some what of a following. Personally, I actually liked Pinball and may try it out a bit. Still, while I would rather have something than nothing, I don't disagree with your overall point that this isn't even remotely an exciting release and most people won't care.

I wanted to like Gato Roboto and maybe a future playthrough would be fun now, assuming it has received patches, but when I bought it at launch on the Switch, the game had more bugs and glitches than any game I've ever played. I had the game soft lock in six uniquely different ways as well as multiple crashes and hard freezes. I literally couldn't play more than 10 minutes without running into a bug that generally resulted in rebooting the game and losing 5+ minutes of progress. After having the game crash or soft locking for the 20th time, I just uninstalled it. I did like the visuals and the concept was cute, but I couldn't believe how broken it was. And I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to bugs and crashes. The only other game that came even close to being this bad was AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected and despite the bugs and crashes, I still ended up beating the that.

@NotSoCryptic Yeah, it makes sense. I'm in a fairly similar place, to be honest. I think I still have more overall excitement for Nintendo in general, but I haven't actually played through a new Switch game since Metroid Dread. After my fiancée and I decided not to spend as much on new games when our job situations were less certain back in January (everything is fine now), I ended up deciding to get through my backlog and that has included the Trails games which I'm playing for the first time. I'm actually playing the Vita Evolution versions and I'm about halfway through Trails in the Sky right now. I also occasionally play co-op games on PS4/5 and while I don't have a Steam Deck, I'm just waiting for the pre-order for it to come in. I'm also waiting on Xenoblade 3 and Metroid Prime, though I'll grab Advance Wars if that ever comes out as well as Fire Emblem: Three Hopes and maybe the new Strikers game.

Though maybe not in Strikers. We'll see. I like a good party game, but when we have a group over in person (which we do a couple of times a week) we tend to focus on tabletop games or if it's us and two of our specific closest friends, we play through games in the Tales series.

@NotSoCryptic My question had sense behind it. Yours definitely didn't and was needlessly antagonistic. I was just curious. It's not like Nintendo Life covers anything else and I was just wondering why you had an account on here, read the article and posted if you don't care about Nintendo products. Thought maybe you'd be open to sharing.

@the_beaver Trails from Zero is the start of its own duology, so you can definitely play it without getting lost, but it's better if you've played the three Trails in the Sky games.

@NotSoCryptic Why are you on Nintendo Life if you don't care about Nintendo stuff?

"The first two Trails of Cold Steel games are also currently missing from the system."

This isn't actually true. Seeing as the article was written with the perspective from Hashimoto Kazuma wanting to bring more games to the Switch in general, I feel like this wasn't quite accurate, as Trails of Cold Steel 1 + 2 have already been ported to and released on Switch, they just haven't been announced for a western release yet. Hopefully they will, though.

EarthBound Endings, Mother 3 or EarthBound 2 are the only options that make sense. The rest are just heinously bad.

Maybe this is just me, but.. games have a time and place in my heart and mind. At this point, I've moved so far beyond Hollow Knight that my interest in Silksong has completely waned. It's possible when it comes out it could eventually be rekindled, but even if it released today.. I just wouldn't care.

@Yosher It's definitely not impossible, but they didn't put Fire Emblem on the NES app despite it being available in Japan on the app and being a much older, much less demanded game (and one that had been released here in remade form eventually). The unwanted their $6. So my gut tells me they'd push for more with this. Though I agree that it could be a really smart move to throw it in the GBA app and tie it to the expansion pack. Many people would see it as the added value they need to upgrade.

@Yosher Replaying a free, short, historic title like Super Mario Bros. isn't really comparable to what would likely end up being a somewhat expensive remaster of a lengthy, old JRPG that many people wouldn't be as quick to re-buy just because it's official. Nintendo isn't trying to grab big cash for the original Super Mario Bros. But there's virtually no way they're going to translate and release a big game like Mother 3 at this point without getting a reasonable payday.

I'm not advocating against releasing it, but it wouldn't be a shock if after all this support and fanfare for years, it came out and then had mediocre sales, which would tell Nintendo (perhaps erroneously) that there's no interest in the series and they should definitely not consider making a new one.

Honestly, unless they're already making Mother 4 or some sort of remake of 3 (or 1 or 2 or all of them), I think simply releasing 3 nearly as-is would be potentially bad. If they want to release it as a download only title as a precursor to a Mother 4 or some remakes, then I think it's a great idea.

@TG1 The reality doesn't change whether it's a classroom or not. Comparatively, it's bad versus how many things are better. If you were going to go to dinner and you had two restaurants to pick from and one scored a 10/10, great food, awesome staff, clean and pleasant atmosphere, but another scored a 5 or 6/10, edible/serviceable food, mildly inattentive but not overly rude staff, boring/slightly unclean interior... And both restaurants had the same cuisine type and their food cost the same, why would you go to the significantly worse restaurant?

People always try to throw around this "use the whole scale from 1 to 10.. 5s and 6s don't mean bad", but it's nonsensical. In all aspects of reviewing anything in life, it's a comparative experience versus expectation of its competitors and an evaluation on the expected product the developer is known to be capable of producing.

And specifically with videogames, new mid/big budget games, they're expensive to buy. At least trying out a new restaurant might set you back only $10-$15 to give it a test run and even if the food is mediocre, it still serves the ultimate purpose of nourishing and sustaining you, but if you spend $60 on a video game that's middling, a game that had it been much better could have given you dozens or hundreds or even thousands of hours of entertainment, you very well might just be out $60 with little to nothing to show for it. Sure, you could force yourself to play it because you already spent the money, but why? Games are entertaining. They're meant to be diverting and enjoyable, and if it's just kind of a "meh, not bad, but not good" experience, why would you ever give it any quarter? It's not a nourishing meal necessary to live, and most (not all, but nearly all) gamers have a backlog of amazing 9s and 10s they've yet to play or dozens of all-time favorites that are a joy to replay or current staples (like online multiplayer games) they're invested in and love.

So why, pray tell, waste their time on something mediocre? You don't get an award for soldiering through a middling experience.

As far as this specific game and the review score, I know very little about it but I'm sure it's a fair assessment. It makes no difference to me either way.

@Teksetter Haha! Nice.

@Fizza 6/10 is bad. That's either a D or failing in the classroom.

But.. June 2nd isn't summer.

@Dragonslacker1 It's not like all of those games are Soulslike games. It's just a word and games used it long before Demon's Souls and will use it long after.

This will probably hit under the "unpopular opinion" header, but I think game collections look like crap anyway. I've never liked the way video game cases look from the sideview, so the player's choice doesn't really make a difference. The only thing worth seeing on a box is on the front and people virtually never store them side by side with the front covers visible, anyway, because it's not space conscious. But the ugly sidebars with uniform colors and either uniform text or tiny logos.. who cares? Nothing worth showing off to begin with!

Well, it's certainly something.

@PARK1755 They did program it. It's in the code. It's just inactive.

@sfb I mean the second one. They said they were thinking of getting 2.

@StarPoint Is Rogue Legacy 2 on Switch? I didn't realize that somehow..

@Clark2k I like your avatar.

@Purgatorium You could potentially regret not getting it! While I don't actually regret it, I know a lot of people regret not buying the 3DS sooner so as to get in on the ambassador program.

I don't have any launch day regrets.